


Fortune's Fool

by blak_cat



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 05:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3237752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blak_cat/pseuds/blak_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twice Carmilla has found herself a prisoner in the earth as the result of love, and twice bombs set her free. She thinks little of it, but Laura believes there's a reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fortune's Fool

Everything was wrong. 

Ell was screaming. 

And Carmilla could have lived ten thousand years and been happy to have never heard that sound.

She didn’t cry, no matter how much she wanted to. She wouldn’t do it then, with every single one of them watching, Will’s face was painted with every color of smug imaginable. Her mother, emotionless while her cronies carted off the girl, kicking and screaming, and crying to God knew where. 

_Hold it together…_

There would be a time for tears later, even now, with Ell’s eyes meeting her own, begging her for help. Asking for anything, even tears. Something to show that Carmilla wasn’t a liar, that some parts of it had been real, there was something redeemable in the monster. Even with Ell’s disgust at what she was, she gasped and choked and sobbed and wanted Carmilla to do the same.

Perhaps if she’d cried she would have been less of a demon to her. Not that it mattered now, Ell was gone, shoved into the doors of the chapel and the yard was quiet now. 

“Leave us.” 

In a second, every person who was not Carmilla or her mother vanished from the field and off into the distance. Will winked at her on his way past, bumping her shoulder with his own. 

“I’m in a position, Mircalla,” she said. “A position you placed me in.”

“Look, I’m sorry.” 

Her voice cracked. Was she sorry? Hell no. So why did she say it? Because she felt obligated to her mother, because a part of her really did fear the temper hiding beneath her beautiful and painstakingly perfected appearance, because it’s what she was supposed to do. 

But she loved that girl. 

“This is bigger than apologies,” her mother said.

She was circling Carmilla now, like a hawk, like a lion, like a hyena, call it whatever but there was a shift in the air. Something predatorial replaced the usual veil of authority. Her mother was looking at her like a bent nail or a napkin that was folded wrong. She was something out of place, to be corrected, or if failing in that, something to be discarded. 

_Mother loves me…_

Was she sure? She thought Ell loved her too. Perhaps she did not know people as well as she thought. Perhaps she did not know them at all. Perhaps in the next 200 or so years she’d get better at observing them. 

Half of her wanted to apologize to her mother, tell her it would never happen again. But the other side knew she shouldn’t have to. That groveling at her feet was wrong, that whatever they were doing to Ell was wrong. And it was the first time she’d ever considered the games she played with her mother’s targets to be anything more than fun. But now it was about Ell and suddenly she cared a little bit more what happened to this girls. 

This is how the end begins. 

“Mircalla, what are you?” 

She swallowed for extra strength to keep her voice from cracking again. 

“A vampire.”

“And are you human?”

“I was once.” 

Wrong answer.

In two strides her mother had her by the neck and shoulders and shoved her until her backwards momentum halted at the solid wood of the carriage to her back and her mother, inches from her front. It was rare that her mother looked angry, truly, actually, angry. And this was one of those moments. But anger meant she cared, right? She wouldn’t be angry if she didn’t care.

“You look like them and talk like them and you walk among them but you are not one of them,” she hissed in Carmilla’s face. “And the second you start thinking you just might be is the second we have a very serious problem, Mircalla.”

She was equal parts frightened of her mother or running an adrenaline rush to fight her. But for what? Ell hated her, despised her, would stake her or crucify her at the first opportunity. But it couldn’t be wrong, it was love, it had to be. It hurt too bad to be anything else. Even through the pain Ell was hammering into her chest at this very minute, she’d run back to her in a second. 

You love someone when you are forgiving in them what is unforgivable. So, to that end, perhaps Ell did not love her back. 

Her mother eased off of her, giving her room to step forward, her outburst capped off and once again corked. Maman began circling her again.

“I let you do what you want when it comes to targets,” she said. “I let you fuck as many of them as you wanted, get out all that 17th century sexual frustration.” 

Carmilla remembered how freeing it had been to actually kiss a girl for the first time. Her mother had encouraged her then, left her alone for days with targets with the only rule being she didn’t decide to use one as a meal. She did things with those girls she would have been strung up and burned for in her own time, well they’d still be strung for and burned but women were getting smarter now. They were being released from their yokes and chains and it was intoxicating to her.

“I should have known something was wrong when you didn’t fuck this one,” her mother scoffed. “This one was too important to you to waste the last of her virginal energy on impulse.”

Carmilla thanked her lack of blood flow for keeping the color of her cheeks in check but she could not bear to look her mother in the eye. Embarrassment was something humans felt, what was happening to her? Why was this happening to her? She didn’t ask for it. If she started crying she might just stake herself that night, end it all. Because Ell did this to her, the soul that had been stolen from her body when her mother sunk her teeth into her neck had been given back the first time Ell held her hand.

“What’s going to happen to her?” Carmilla dared to ask, wincing when her mother snapped her neck in her direction. 

“I think I like you not knowing much better, let you think on it.”

“And how long will that be for?”

“For the rest of your life, if I have my way. And I do have my way.”

Carmilla knew this tongue thrashing was not going to be her only punishment. She’d rarely been reprimanded by Maman. Will complained about it constantly, how she got away with everything because she was their mother’s favorite. Not this time. 

“I’m going to give you time to think on what you’ve done, Mircalla,” she said. 

Her mother stepped away and snapped her fingers. Will and the others returned, and a few of them seemed to be carrying something. When they parted she saw a wooden coffin heavily set on the ground in a thud and there was something like a sloshing sound. She watched deep red seep out of the seam of the lid and box. 

Her mother snapped her fingers again and suddenly several hands were on her, dragging her forward. On instinct she fought back, fangs protracting and growling as they did the same right back, locking their hands down like clamps and dragging her forward. One or two of them even bit her to try and tranquilize her.

She saw Will, his smug face was gone and he refused to meet her eyes. He wasn’t helping them but he wasn’t helping her either.

The lid flipped open and inside the coffin was a bath of thick blood drained from who knew how many people. 

In a second she was thrust down into it, face first. It was not warm or inviting but cold and thick and claustrophobia-inducing as she panicked immediately to get back out. But the hands held her down as if to drown her useless lungs. It was blackness itself hugging her in that box.

She heard the lid close over her and heard the beating sound of hammer and nail. She shuffled and squirmed and kicked and pushed to roll herself over only to come face-to-face with more darkness and the solid wood of the lid. She pushed and nothing budged. 

The rest was a blur. She cried for a long time. Years? Was that possible? She slept as often as she could and did her best dream and ran from dreams as often as possible. She thought of everything, she counted sheep, she thought about poems, she recounted plays to herself, and kept her mind away from Ell. 

She thought about the world spinning around the sun. 

She thought about rain. 

She thought about her many names. 

Anagram after anagram and identities piling up. Her mother still called her by her birth name, but did that one really have meaning for her anymore? She had been nothing before she’d been Carmilla. Carmilla was worth something in Ell’s eyes, Carmilla got to hold Ell’s hand. Carmilla got to talk to her and tell stories, Carmilla fell in love with Ell and possibly, maybe just possibly, earned Ell’s love in return. 

Carmilla was closest to the gates of heaven that Mircalla would ever be.

So if she emerged, if her mother dug her up or fate set her free, she would be Carmilla. Anagrams and disguises could come and go but she would be Carmilla forever she promised herself.

So decades later when a sound like a canon blew far too close and she was ejected in a burst of blood and dirt and wood, she stood up Carmilla. She entered the new world as Carmilla. 

Mircalla was locked in the coffin and Carmilla got to go free. It wasn’t until she met her that she thought there might be a reason why.

\--

Carmilla broke her no crying rule. 

“You are an idiot, Mircalla,” her mother shouted over the din of gasps and cheers when Carmilla appeared with the sword. “Have you learned nothing?”

She said nothing, Laura scrambled to her feet and ran behind Carmilla, hands on her back. 

“You think she loves you?”

She said nothing. Her mother wanted to play a game, if she got Carmilla talking she would lose, she woul pour poison in her ear and rot her brain until she’d be a pawn again. Laura’s fingers were digging into her shoulders, perhaps in anger now, more than fear.

“Your heart is deformed,” she spat. “When she sees that, what will she do but run?”

Behind her, she heard Laura open her mouth and she shoved back. _Be silent_ , she thought violently.

“You bow only for me, you serve only me,” her mother’s veneer was beginning to crack again. “I am your mother, I pried apart the Reaper’s hands for you. I loved you as no one else did, Mircalla.”

Laura was revving up for another attempt at talking and Carmilla rolled her eyes and shoved her back, hoping this time she got the message.

Carmilla wondered in what fucked up way her mother was jealous of Laura. It had to do with power, she was sure. Her mother hated losing her vice grip on Carmilla’s neck to a kiss on the cheek from Laura. She hated knowing Carmilla would plunge herself into the ocean, risk death via that black hole of a sword, just to get the chance to hold Laura’s hand one last time. 

_I move planets and constellations for no one, Mircalla…_ her mother said to her once while spewing out how special, and perfect, and unique her favorite child was. _You are important._

“Even if you escape this, you will find the world has no use for you anymore, my dear countess.”

“I don’t need the world, I just need one.”

And then she threw Laura to the ground before she could do anything stupid and lunged at her mother. It carried on for minutes, around her the members of the coven were lunging at frat boys, the alchemy club, and the Summer Society. She kept eyes, vaguely, on Laura. she and her mother effortlessly changed between their human and animal forms again and again. They lunged at each other in smoke, in gnashing, in claws. It went on and on. 

And then she won. But then something worse happened.

She wasn’t sure if it was real or a trick of the light, perhaps it let you see what you wanted to see to draw you in. But others around her could see it too. The souls or the bodies or the minds of those sacrificed to this thing were crawling and crying and reaching out. It was like a scene from a disturbing horror movie. 

And she could see Ell, exactly as she looked the last time Carmilla saw her. She was young and pale and her skin shined and her hair glistened in the false sun and the mole by her eye was as adorable as ever. Her eyes were tethered to Carmilla’s and they watched each other. And the way she ran those eyes over her body, formed questions with her face, told Carmilla it was her, it was real. 

Ell was alive, in some fashion, suspended in time, just like her. 

But not like her. 

She felt those tears she hid from Ell those hundred years ago form a coup against her brain and pour down. She didn’t want to be seen crying, she didn’t want to know she was crying. But Ell looked like she’d seen nothing more beautiful in those world and she saw her own name form on the girl’s lips, even if her voice was nowhere to be found.

But time was running out. The creature below was getting antsy that its food was delayed, that there was apparent chaos going on above it, and that its previous meals were doing their best to escape. 

She had a choice: she could reach and try and pull Ell out. Or she could use the last of that energy to end it all and make sure Laura got out safe.

_Laura…_

She could feel her eyes on her from a mile away. She was afraid to turn and make eye contact, what would she find? Would Laura have enough awareness to be jealous? Was she smarter than that? Would she look at Carmilla with pity? Would she hate her?

_Laura or Ell? You cannot have both…_

It was not a dilemma she ever imagined herself facing. And it made her want to throw up even having to think about sacrificing one for the other. She pushed thoughts of pros and cons and list of all the good and the bad out of her mind. She focused on instinct alone. What did the bottom of her stomach, the base of her spine, the most inner chamber of her heart tell her to do? And suddenly she knew.

She loved Ell, but she could not _live_ without Laura.

So she turned and locked eyes with her roommate, her almost lover, her soulmate, her only true friend. 

“You know, I am really starting to hate this heroic vampire crap.”

Laura was on the verge of giving a watery laugh when Carmilla didn’t give her the chance. She was up and running, and behind her she could hear Laura shouting her name shouting for her to not, begging her to wait. But Carmilla wouldn’t do a heartfelt goodbye, if she looked at Laura for too long, if she touched her, if she kissed her, she could never leave her. 

So she jumped.

Or maybe she flew. 

The last thing she felt was that sword hit its mark before whatever that thing was sent her flying. She went back first into the sides of its hole in the ground and she thought maybe she heard more yells. But they were getting fainter as she dropped into darkness while something roared above her. 

She hit the ground and felt whatever bones didn’t break against the wall, shatter just then. She cried out on reflex but all that came out of her gaping mouth was silence. She couldn’t move, nothing was functional and it all burned her from the inside. She wondered if staking might hurt less, she’d give anything for it now. She’d heard of vampires who died from pain, they simply gave up to make it stop. She might do that now.

She was not so far down she couldn’t hear voices but she would never be able to make them out and she would never be able to call for help. All that became of her attempts was the crash of several rocks around her as another body came slamming down into the solid rock of the floor. And she saw her mother, belly first, on the floor, sprawled out spread eagle. 

Carmilla managed to turn her head to her and they locked eyes. They just looked at each other. They didn’t hunt for anything, they didn’t trade glares or trade despair. They just saw each other. And she watched her mother’s hand slowly inch its way towards her, finger by finger until it just barely brushed the tips of her own fanned out hand. 

And they stayed like that, hands brushed together, eyes doing just the same. 

For several days, or what she imagined was several days, she went in and out of consciousness or in and out of death. She imagined she stood before God or maybe it was the devil. Whichever it was it stared at her and stared right through her, it hunted and searched and dug inside her chest for something she prayed was there. 

_I was brave enough to die so let me…_

If the gates of heaven existed, they were still closed to her. But how she craved an absolution, she’d won one hadn’t she? She’d earned it. 

But it wasn’t about earning a reward. Laura taught her that. 

_Laura, Laura, Laura…_

She looked at Carmilla like she was made of gold or stars and washed the blood from her hands in a brush of lips to her cheek. She was the sun, the thing Carmilla hid from because she was afraid of what it would shine light on or what it might wake up, what it would cleanse, or how it would burn to give in.

And now, the moon killed itself to make sure the sun lived. 

But then came the sounds. And suddenly she was back in 1940’s Austria, stumbling across a battlefield soaked in blood. Except she wasn’t, she was on her back at the bottom of a pit and their were voices above her and rubble falling around her.

She saw her mother, her eyes were closed now and Carmilla wasn’t sure whether she wanted her to be dead or sleeping. More bombs. How long had she been in the ground this time? If she woke and Laura was a relic of the past, she would kill herself right then, let the world be done with her. 

Another explosion, this one far too close. A piercing ray of light fell on her as the rocks above her gave way and she let her eyes close and heard voices around her, men’s voices. One of them may have said her name but she was halfway between dreaming and life. 

When her next wave of awareness hit, there were arms around her, multiple pairs and voices all around. Someone was running to get help. 

And then again a shock of consciousness, now there was just one person carrying her and she was inside. Then she was out again.

And then next time she woke it was in very familiar warm arms.

\--

There hadn’t been time to sit down and have a talk. The kiss ended, Laura immediately babbled out questions of logistics and then Laf was in the room and they were running into the mountains as fast as they could with whatever they could carry. 

They were gathered around a campfire the first night, Laf and Perry huddled together “for warmth.” 

“Carmilla,” Laura hissed when she said as much with air quotes. 

It was fun. In a demented sort of way only Carmilla would appreciate. They were running for their lives and living off the land like some sort of doomsday video game.

But it made for some awkward road movie material. Laura avoided eye contact and jumped when she brushed Carmilla’s hand like she was in middle school all over again and lost all her nerve on the admitting feelings part. Not that Carmilla was about to rush her into anything of course. 

When they set out sleeping bags, Carmilla changed into her cat form on cue. Perry yelped and Laf gave her what she could only assume was their own form of a “hardcore” hand gesture. She pawed around in a circle before dropping into a curled ball and lazily watching as the others prepared for sleep.

She’d keep watch over them, watch over the fire, and she’d watch over Laura. 

“Carm,” she heard a small whisper and turned her head in that direction. 

Laura was sitting up in her sleeping bag, her handles twiddling together betraying the inner workings of what was clearly a very aggressive thought. She opened and closed her mouth many times and Carmilla gave an exaggerated yawn and let her tail flop from side to side. 

“Knock it off,” Laura said. “Look I just thought maybe we should—This is like an awful place and time but we should probably—okay look I can’t talk to you when you’re like that.”

Carmilla got up, sighed inside, and lazily walked over a few feet to Laura. She sat in front of her and transformed back down to herself. She looked expectantly, plopping butt-first next to Laura.

“I just thought, we should talk,” Laura said. 

“About?”

“You know…” 

Her hands danced quickly between the two of them and Carmilla sighed. 

“Is that a conversation you really want to have right here, right now?”

She let her hand slide overtop of Laura’s as reassurance. She watched the inner dialogue play across her face into Laura sighed and nodded. For good measure, Carmilla leaned forward, let her fingertips brush Laura’s jaw in her direction, and kissed her lightly. Laura’s eyes remained closed for at least five seconds after Carmilla pulled away and she opened them in a slight daze. 

“I know, it floors many,” Carmilla winked and Laura pushed her arm with a smile. “You should sleep, Laura.” 

“So should you.”

“’Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep.’”

“Huh?”

“Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2. It’s nighttime, cupcake. I really couldn’t if I tried.”

“Yeah but you’ll be up all day tomorrow too.”

“I’ve had worse.”

Laura frowned and looked down. Then after a moment of thought, she scooted herself, sleeping bag and all, across the two-foot gap between them and snuggled in to Carmilla’s side. Carmilla tensed, if only for a moment, before she let herself relax and drape an arm lazily over Laura’s shoulder. 

“You didn’t bring a sleeping bag,” Laura said. 

“I’m not really a fan of closed in spaces.”

She meant it to be nonchalant but Laura read it for what it was immediately and raised her head to lock eyes with her. There was a great deal of pain in Laura’s face, and a great deal of pity as well. 

“I’m alright,” Carmilla said, squeezing Laura’s arm. “I’m not buried in anything right now, I just prefer to not relive the experience.”

Laura resumed her place, cheek overtop Carmilla’s heart and arms wrapped around her middle, a little tighter than before. Carmilla’s fingers lazily danced circles over the exposed skin of Laura’s hand. She waited patiently for the sounds of Laura’s breathing to even out into sleep, but it never happened. Every time she looked down, she saw the brush of Laura’s eyelashes as she blinked. 

“If I let you spiel at me whatever you’re thinking, will you please try to go to sleep?” Carmilla sighed.

“I just—you got trapped down there twice,” Laura said. 

“Yes, I’ve seen enough of the underside of the Earth to last me for the next 600 years,” Carmilla said. Laura raised her head again to look at her. 

“Doesn’t it…I don’t know, catch your attention at all, that it happened twice?”

“I’m not about to go hunting for symmetry in history, creampuff,” she said. “What happens, happens.”

Laura made that pout frown again and Carmilla gave a huff and sat up. She brushed a few wayward dead leaves and bits of grass from her arm and looked at Laura, feigning interest. 

“I don’t know, you challenged your mom twice and ended up buried underground because of it and then it ended being bombs that freed you,” Laura said. “It’s interesting.”

“I get the feeling ‘interesting’ is not the word you wanted to use.”

“You’re right, it seems a little purposeful.”

Carmilla looked up, out here the stars were doubled and were bright enough to be a nightlight. She hunted for constellations above her, spotting Grosser Baer just askew of right above them. She spent far too much of her life gazing at stars and trying to decide if they did indeed know something she didn’t about the world or about herself, she wasn’t about to begin again.

“Destiny and fate don’t exist.”

“I’m not saying they do, it’s just that it seems like something wants you to hang around a little longer.”

Twice she was interred for love and twice she was freed by similar means, it seemed just like bad luck. But if it was a novel then high school English classes everywhere would be clamoring to write their term papers on the parallelism of it. Still, that didn’t mean Carmilla agreed.

“And why do you think that is?” Carmilla said.

“I don’t know, but I’m very happy I get to find out.”

There was no way in any circle of hell that Carmilla could ever think she truly deserved the tiny, smiley, altogether far-too-kind girl who hugged and kissed her and held her hand of her own free will. How had it happened? When had it happened? Why was it allowed to happen? 

Laura continued to lay against her chest, Carmilla’s hand that wasn’t stroking over her Laura’s hand was running fingers through her hair. And slowly and surely, Laura began to enter a steady breathing rhythm. 

“I spent a week thinking I’d never see you again,” Laura sighed in her last moments awake. “After all that lack of sleep and crying there’s no way I’m going to think you coming back is anything less than divine intervention.”

Carmilla breathed out a laugh and kissed the top of Laura’s head. Whether she believed there was something to be said for her trials or destiny or any of that crap or not, she was perfectly content exactly where she was.


End file.
